For the past few months, I’ve been composing music for a new CBC prime-time domestic comedy, 18 To Life. The producers and I decided early on that the music production and performances should not be too slick. I opted for some country-blues inspired music, along with simple jazz-blues riffs and rhythms. I bought or rented a bunch of great instruments for this truly fun project: national steel guitar (also known as a Dobro), harmonicas, a banjo, a late-70s Gibson Les Paul, a kazoo (!), etc. I also rely on software instruments like Spectrasonics’ new Trilian basses, RMX with Cajun and Jazz percussion/drum loops, AcousticsampleS‘ Kawai piano, SAM Symphobia and LASS strings.
Produced by Montreal’s Galafilm, the series will premiere January 4, at 8 pm.
The film Un Cargo pour l’Afrique (A Cargo for Africa) won Best Canadian Feature at Montreal’s 2009 World Film Festival. This prize is voted by the public, and it should help this humble film reach a wider audience. Who Sank The Titanic (also known as Titanic: How It Really Sank), another film which features my music, is nominated in the Best History Documentary Program category of the 2009 Gemini Awards (Canadian television).
I’m thrilled to report that Roger Cantin’s Un Cargo pour l’Afrique is in the official competition of the Montreal World Film Festival. I composed part of the soundtrack, which includes as well the beautiful songs and voice of Oumar Ndiaye. The music I wrote features traditional african instruments like drums and kora, alongside orchestral strings. I attented the premiere last night, and it was a rousing success! The film features the superb acting of local acting legend Pierre Lebeau, and will be out in Quebec theatres in the second week of September.
While writing the soundtrack, I met and became friends with the very talented Senegalese singer/songwriter Oumar N’Diaye. His infectious joie de vivre, his professionalism and amazing voice make any musical collaboration a real joy. Here are a couple of recent photographs, taken by my wife Brenda Keesal:
During the next few months, I’ll be posting text and pics detailing the building of my new studio. It will be in the basement of my house, and will consist of a control room (11 x 18 feet), and a small recording booth. The ceiling will be between 7′6″ and 8′. Here are the first pics, for all you mud lovers out there.
Award-winning composer Leon Willett offers his analysis of film scoring devices, complete with score and audio examples (Willett’s an excellent mock-up composer). This is a really great resource for composers interested in learning more ‘tricks’ of the trade. The composer also offers one-on-one courses in harmony, counterpoint, creating mock-ups and more. Click here to explore it.
For the past few months, I’ve been composing the music for YTV’s new reality-tv competition series, In Real Life. The music is a mix of action orchestral and power-pop, and it’s been a fantastic challenge for me to keep ramping up the musical adrenaline! Produced by Montreal’s Apartment 11, the series features 12-14-year olds competing in various incredible challenges. I couldn’t have created this music without these amazing tools: Nine Volt Audio libraries, Stylus RMX, StormDrum 1 and 2, Tonehammer instruments. Keep a lookout for new YTV episodes on Wednesday nights, at 7 pm.
Here are some examples of the music I created for the show:
An exciting new player has arrived in the world of sample libraries. Tonehammer, the brainchild of composer Troels Folmann and sound designer Mike Peaslee, offers very affordable, out-of-the-ordinary deep sample collections for the Kontakt virtual instrument. What is ‘deep’ sampling? Most of the instruments offer up to 10x round-robin, assuring that you’re always going to get new sound variations when you strike the same MIDI note twice. Furthermore, many of the instruments/objects were sampled in interesting acoustic spaces. This combination of real spaces and multiple variations adds up to an organic sound. These are truly musical sample collections. The ‘instruments’, of which there are far too many to list here, include sneakers, museum railings, bamboo sticks, whale drum, coins, hangdrum, bathtub, yells, marching band percussion, a sofa, etc. The official website features superb demos. For more info, click here.
I’m proud to say that my new solo electroacoustic music DVD is now out on Montreal’s empreintes DIGITALes label. It was a real joy to be able to have such great artists as Fortner Anderson, Khrystell Burlin, Delphine Measroch and Christian Olsen collaborate with me. The dvd, in both stereo and 5.1 surround sound, features many urban field recordings that are used both as decor and serve as main subjects of my deranged sonic experiments, hence the title (City Scraper) It also contains the art video The Lighthouse, for which I wrote the soundtrack. You can buy the dvd-audio and listen to excerpts by clicking this link.
Since this post, my DVD has gotten this excellent review by Frans DeWaard in Vital Weekly #669:
The DVDs released by Empreintes Digitales don’t contain images, but highly quality music, to be selected as stereo or 5.1 surround sound. In the past I complained about the lack of difference between the various releases on this label, with some exceptions, but the release by Ned Bouhalassa is something different. Bouhalassa has a background as a composer for films and TV series and is from Montréal. He doesn’t seem to belong the academic world that usually inhabits Empreintes Digitales. He works much more like the others around with loops of sounds, more regular synthesizers but every now and then also throws in some breakbeat rhythm. At the same time he uses field recordings (street sounds, natural sounds) and the length of the pieces is not entirely pop song either. The combination of all of this makes this quite a surprising [disc], a great one for this label. Modern electronics without the pretensions, the same idiom and such like. Nice one indeed.
I’m very busy these days on the soundtrack for a UK/Canada documentary on the crew’s role in the sinking of the most famous passenger ship of them all, and how this tragedy could have been avoided. The iceberg is also a key protaginist – so much so that I have composed my very first iceberg theme! Directed by Patrick Reams, and produced by Pioneer Productions and Handel Productions, this Channel 4 commission features a combination of drama, documentary and CGI footage. In writing for my virtual orchestra, I have been inspired by the music of Philip Glass, particularly the soundtrack to Notes On A Scandal.
Next month, I will be starting work on the soundtrack to a Sci-Fi/Muse tv movie entitled Rise Of The Gargoyle, featuring Eric Balfour. More on that in a few weeks.
I’m going to Seattle tomorrow to attend my first international gaming conference, and I’m excited, particularly by the Audio Track conference on the last day. Casual Connect is a conference for makers of casual games – you know, the ones that attract over 200 million users online, but that only mom, dad and the kids in the bus will admit to. I was turned on to the idea of going by talking to my friend Robert Gordon from Article 19. He and I go back to the 90s, when I wrote some cues for his early online games. I’m thinking that there’s going to be a huge demand for these kinds of cell-phone friendly puzzles and challenge games, and that composers will benefit from the need for game soundtracks. If you want to get an idea of what the level of quality of the scores of casual games, check out the Gaming portfolio of the very successful company Somatone.
In collaboration with the amazing wind and guitar player, Bryan Highbloom, I’ve started working on a pilot project for Montreal’s Jewish General Hospital Jazz Festival, now in its 9th year. The idea is to have available a collection of soundscapes featuring sounds from nature mixed in with music, that the staff can turn on in order to calm the atmosphere in their unit, to give themselves and their patients a ‘music break’, or to just add a little ambience to what can be a pretty poor sound environment. The music will play in mono (!!) on the built-in PA system, at about 20dB below the typical ambient noise level. 2 or 3 units will test out the music for about 10 days or so, and if the feedback is successful, we will try to make it permanent.
I am using mostly outdoor field recordings I’ve made over the years, along with some found in Logic Pro and the sounddogs.com library, combined with original musical cues that feature wind instruments, acoustic guitar, sung voice, and a large variety of sampled and synthesized sounds. My goal is to create music that is present and yet in the background; that calms without being boring; that is pleasant but not muzak-y. It’s a challenge, but I’m learning much. The biggest issue I’m facing is that we (Bryan and I) want the natural ambiences to be as loud or louder than the music. That means that the former will potentially occupy a large part of the frequency spectrum, leaving far less room for the music than I’m typically used to.
The project will run from approximately June 25 to July 8 or so. I will follow up on the blog to let you know how the soundscapes were received.
Recently, I found out about US composer and inventor Raymond Scott for the first time. This has been quite a revelation for me, as I had never heard of his inventions, nor did I know that he was responsible for many of the classic Looney Tunes scores (he did not write music for the cartoons; Carl Stalling licensed songs like Powerhouse). A true genius who was a mentor to another giant, Robert Moog, Scott invented one of the early synthesizers (Clavivox), pioneered the use of a monitor over a keyboard for film/tv score work (Videola), and created a mysteriously complex sequencer called the Electronium, pictured below. You can hear many of his electronic pieces and read about his life in the accompanying book that is part of the set entitled Manhattan Research Inc. There is also a rich and fascinating website devoted to Scott, his music and inventions which you can visit here.
You’ve probably heard by now of Radiohead’s single Nude Remix project, and Trent Reznor has offered up several of his tracks for remixing by his fans. Even the Barenaked Ladies are in on the act. What this means is that individual stems or parts of a song can be downloaded, re-arranged, added to, and shared via the web. I am very curious about how this new idea will develop, which artists will embrace it next. This morning, I stumbled onto Arcade Fire’s beautiful interactive video for their song Black Mirror. Aside from the silent-film techniques used, what sets it apart from other clips is that you can deconstruct the song by turning on or off 6 tracks. You can make yourself an instrumental version by muting the vocals, a drum-free version by cutting out the drums, or listen to Win Butler singing a capella.
I’ve added a new page to this site, featuring audio examples of my soundtrack work. It’s one of the tabs at the top, just below the title of my blog. Don’t be shy, post a comment or two and let me know what you think!
